We sold our house in CA, bought a house in NH, and moved 3300 miles across the country. We shipped a full tractor-trailer truck load of stuff*, shipped our cars, and yes, shipped our cats. In fact, we did all this in less than 6 weeks!
I promised myself a vacation if I pulled this off, and so we made the move via Amtrak's California Zephyr, in a sleeper car bedroom. Someone cooked for us, told us when to eat, and catered to most of our whims. We spent one lovely day in Chicago with Ken's oldest friend and saw lots of sights and ate an absolutely wonderful dinner at Blackbird before boarding the Lake Shore Limited for the final leg to Boston. The train trip turned out to be the best vacation ever - I didn't accomplish a darned thing, but I did take many wonderful naps!
The socks in the photo below were finished today (proof of finishing photos to come), and my knitting mojo seems to be back - finally. I'm finally able to read a bit, although nothing terribly deep or intense - which is a relief. My stress-level is so much lower than it has been in years; I'm actually shocked that I can sleep all night and sleep for 7 or 8 hours! I haven't slept that long consistently since I got out of high school.
We are finding our way around the area. What did people do without GPS? Cell phone signals are awful at the house, so we are looking at different providers. We've figured out the transfer station for garbage, getting deliveries of fuel oil and going to town on weekends to do serious grocery shopping. Thank goodness for Amazon, eBay, and LLBean. It's nice to be able to order and get items a day or 2 later.
*I am still stunned at how much stuff we moved. We got rid of more than 4 full truckloads with 1-800-GOT-JUNK, gave stuff away, donated truckloads of clothing and household goods to St. Vincent de Paul, and we still completely filled a tractor-trailer! About 300 boxes and lots of furniture were household items and my knitting, sewing, quilting, and book stash. There were also about 200 boxes of stuff from Ken's shop and garage! More about unpacking later!
